The Hindu Business Line : Woman manager: Thoughts on what she will be like in 2020

(From left) Ms Anita Gupta, Chairperson, MMA-Women Managers Forum; Mr D.P. Padmanabhan, President, MMA; Ms Musharaf Hai, Chairperson and CEO, Unilever Pakistan; and Mr C.K. Ranganathan, Senior Vice-President, MMA, at the MMA Golden jubilee women managers' convention in Chennai on Wednesday. — Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , March 8

Only core competence, talent and performance will count for the woman manager in 2020, said Ms Musharaf Hai, Chairperson and CEO, Unilever, Pakistan, in her inaugural address at the Madras Management Association (MMA) Golden Jubilee Women Managers Convention. She shared her dreams for the woman of 2020 and also did a bit of crystal gazing into the way the world around will change. The real woman, she said, touches hearts and changes lives.

Ms Hai visualised a world, which will be seamless and will unlock the pent-up force of the women everywhere, be it in India, Brazil or China.

The flipside is the pressure of a lonely life for woman managers. Work and personal life will increasingly merge, Ms Hai said.

Quoting Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, she said her final message to women managers was to "Stay hungry, Stay foolish".

Ms Anita Gupta, the Chairperson of MMA Women Managers Forum, said that growth is led by a younger India and that there were increasing presence of women in all spheres of activity. Talking about the empowerment of women, Mr Javed Akhtar, poet and writer, said that it all depends on how daughters are brought up.

If they are accepted as independent individuals, they have to be given rights and not treated as objects, he said.